With the development of digital multimedia and networks, entertainment experiences of users in daily life are enriched. Existing techniques enable users at home to enjoy high-definition TV programs from a digital optical disk, a cable television, the Internet and the like. Stereo, 5.1 acoustic channel, 7.1 acoustic channel and even more vivid sound effect may be experienced. Moreover, the users are able to implement these experiences by using tablet electronic devices and mobile phones. The related art also includes that a user is able to transfer a digital content between different devices through a network so as to play the transferred digital content, and to control playing on a device through a remote control or a gesture, e.g. the user is able to control to switch to a program of a previous channel or a next channel and so on.
In the related art, for controlling multiple devices, generally each device has a respective remote controller to perform control, but these remote controllers are not universal, and most of these controllers for devices such as a traditional TV set or sound box, are not network enabled. There may be some network enabled remote controls, e.g., a device (e.g., a mobile phone, a pad) having computing and networking capabilities can be loaded with software supporting intercommunication protocols to control another device.
With the development of techniques, there are increasing demands for sharing and transferring content being played between multiple devices, and the manipulation methods above don't seem convenient enough. For example, a user needs to select a remote control corresponding to a specific device from a number of remote controllers and change remote controls from time to time to control different devices, the device may be controlled through operations on a pad or a mobile phone by people familiar with basic operations on computers, or a single device is controlled by a simple gesture. Usually, in order to use different devices, it is necessary to learn to use different manipulation tools.
At present, gesture control is a relatively novel manipulation technology. A camera on a device monitors a gesture, analyzes and recognizes the monitored gesture, converts the recognized gesture into control instructions for the device; or a user uses a wearable device, and wears a device like a ring, a watch, a vest and the like on a hand, an arm and the body to recognize an action of the user, so as to realize the control of the device.
The related art and some products enable a user to use a gesture to manipulate a device. For example, a camera is added on a television so as to acquire and recognize a gesture of people, and then the television is manipulated by the gesture according to predefined correspondences between gestures and operation commands. Achieved manipulations include a change of a channel, a change of a volume and so on.
Such gesture recognition techniques and related products require that a manipulated device is provided with a camera (in the case of computer vision recognition). At present, there may be devices without a camera in some environments, such as a home environment, due to reasons such as device sizes and cost. However, it is expected that these devices may also be operated by a user through gestures and it is expected that additional cameras transmit gesture information to the devices, so that a user can use gestures to control the devices. Another method is that a wearable device is used with another device after being matched and connected with the latter. Usually, wearable devices and other devices are connected one by one before being used.
There have been related techniques capable of implementing mutual discovery and control between devices by transmission of control information between the devices through a network. For example, a Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) technique specifies how to implement discovery and control between devices by sending and receiving network messages. The technique uses a network address and a digital code as a device identifier which is a machine identifier, and the final control needs to be operated after a user makes a selection according to the machine identifier.
To sum up, at present, there is no effective solution in the related art yet for helping a user to control more devices within a relatively small range through an easier and more natural operation so that the user does not need to learn to master more usage methods, and costs of enterprise production and user consumption can be decreased.